How We Hold the Pencil

We are busy working on our Passover creations in the Haifa class, and today we had to do some work that included coloring. We were coloring in all of the spaces on a seder plate, and on top of getting to spend some quality time with the students one-on-one, I got to see how our students write. Since curriculum night, I've been interested to see how our students write and hold the pencil. Each student I observed did so confidently and in his or her own way.

Above, Rylan likes to use both hands to get the work done twice as fast!

Above, Jake is using a hand grip that the occupational therapist handed out. He is using it to hold his writing utensils in a more efficient way.

The students worked very hard on the first part of our art project, and will continue to work on them throughout the week!

-Alison and Sauci

What Goes In There?

This morning we made our way down to the playground to find lots of empty planters. These planters had been built over the weekend during Tikkun Olam Day, but they are currently empty. Eli and Avram were a few of the first children on the playground, and they asked me what they were for. I jokingly told them that they were places to grow Avrams and Elis, and this is the result!

-Alison and Sauci

More phonological fun!

The children were very inspired to create their own tongue twisters and rhymes after we read: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss. Each child had a somewhat different take on this activity but they all were experimenting with the sounds of letters. Teddy Post was the first to venture out in to tongue twister territory by saying: "ake, pake, snake, make." He followed this up with: "make, bake, lake, cake." Joshua R. and Oliver also had a lot of fun with this activity. Joshua said: "My sister is a walnut. My sister is a peanut. My mom and dad are gazillion nuts!" Hearing Teddy Post's rhymes, Joshua followed with: "Snake, bake, snake make cake." Having some fun with friend Sam's name, Joshua created: "Sam, gwam, Sam, ham." Oliver followed with: "Sam, lamb, gam, zam." Oliver also created his own rhymes like: "Funny, nutty, gunny bunny" and "Amelia, Bedelia, Delia, Amelia." Not wanting to leave his other sister out, Oliver continued by saying: "Sophia, Bophia, Nowia." After thinking out loud and telling the children that my dog's name was Jazz, Ilana volunteered: "Jazz, Paz, Taz." Nathaniel, who was obviously familiar with "real" tongue twisters, walked by saying, "She sells seashells by the seashore!" These are great activities to do with your children at home, in the car, while waiting at various places, etc.

Teamwork

 As part of our preparation for Passover, the Levana children are exploring some of the foods found on the Seder plate. Recently we enjoyed a multisensory examination of eggs. We felt them, smelled them, and looked at them as they came out of the box, as we broke them into a bowl, and as we peeled the eggs that we had hard-boiled. Best of all, we all had the opportunity to taste eggs, both boiled and scrambled, as part of our snack. As we explore together in these ways, the social skills that the children are acquiring become apparent; they are able to share equipment, to take turns, and to help one another by holding the bowl. Their growing social ease enables the children to work together successfully, to learn from one another, and to enjoy the process.

Stories from Israel

Last week we were delighted to welcome Sam and Abby's mom, Rachel, to our classroom. You may recall that Rachel was kind enough to send us beautiful photographs of our Owl touring Israel with her. On Friday Rachel came in to tell us the stories behind the photographs. We had been investigators, and tried to guess where Owl was in Israel based on the photos. It was interesting for us to hear the real stories from Rachel.Rachel used the map of Israel to show us all the places she had taken Owl. We are starting to recognize some of the names of places in Israel, such as Haifa and Tel Aviv. Thank you Rachel! The Unicorn class had a great time with this project!

Thanks for Visiting!

The Levana children enjoyed visits recently with Samantha's and Joshua's moms. The children never tire of hearing Where's Walrus, in which the reader provides the script to accompany the funny picture story, and our visitors each offered a very engaging interpretation. Samantha's mom helped us to make charoset, and Joshua's mom accompanied us to the Haifa classroom for music with Josh and havdalah. We notice how comfortable the children are now when parents visit. All are quite familiar with one another's parents, and are matter-of-fact about their own parents leaving at the end of the visit. Thanks, Jen and Jen, for spending time with us! 

 

same schedule different view

Last week, the teachers visited the Boston University Lab Preschool on the BU campus. We were struck by many good practices within the classroom that we wanted to try, however, it is hard to implement too many new things with small children. We decided to start with our schedule - something that both Judi and I have been struggling with all year. We wanted to have visual cues for the children so that they knew what to expect as the day went on. However, finding a way to present our activities was proving problematic.

This is our old schedule:

As you can see, it was jumbled, difficult to see and, therefore, difficult to follow and understand. We noticed at the Lab School, and then again in some of the other classrooms at TBSCC, their schedule was created horizontally, similar to how we read books. We decided to try it today!

This is our new schedule (going across the wood frame of the bulletin board below the Hebrew letters):

The new cards were easy to see and the order was simple to follow. We talked about the different events that happen each time we are at school (circle, snack, playground time) and the events that are special to a particular day (dance, music, mystery visitor).

Later in the day, one child felt a little sad and missed his mom. We went right over to the schedule and easily followed our day's events. We realized that we had one more activity and then we would be heading out to the playground where his mom would meet us. This new set up is awesome!!